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Last year I had the pleasure of interviewing one of my favorite authors, Richard Price, who has already amassed an oeuvre of great novels — Clockers, Lush Life, The Wanderers — along with screenplays for The Color of Money and Sea of Love and scripts for my all-time favorite TV show, The Wire.

Price had written a new novel, called The Whites, about cops and the crimes they just can't seem to solve. In Price's world, the "whites" were like Ahab's white whale and the obsessive quest to slay the beast.

“They had all met their personal Whites,” Price wrote in the novel, "those who had committed criminal obscenities on their watch and then walked away untouched by justice."

While partnering with WXXI's Veronica Volk on our podcast Finding Tammy Jo, I couldn't help but think about Price's book as Volk and I explored the case of "Cali Doe," the girl who was found fatally shot in a Caledonia cornfield in November 1979 and not identified until 2015.

The podcast entered its third week Sunday, May 15 — you can find it at findingtammyjo.com — and this episode focuses on the work of retired Livingston County Sheriff John York, who never gave up hope that one day the girl would be identified.

Some of you who have listened to the first two episodes have commented about the emotion that is so evident every time York talks about the case. As Veronica and I can tell you, that emotion is genuine; York became insistent that this girl would not remain a mystery. Even though her life had been so callously and brutally snuffed out, she deserved some support in death that perhaps she had not found in her short time on the Earth.

For years York flooded police departments across the country with information about the unidentified girl. He pursued the history and manufacturers of the clothes she wore. He interviewed serial killers who were suspects. (Sunday's podcast episode will include some audio of those interviews.)

"I always said, 'If we let go, it's done,' " York said in a recent interview on WXXI's Need to Know. "If we don't bring this to resolve and give her justice, who's going to.

"Here's a child, shot, dumped roadside, shot again, stripped of identification ...," he said. "Somebody has to give that child justice. It was our obligation and responsibility and she had a right to that justice."

I've covered police for a lot of years, and over the past few years we've heard a lot about cops doing bad things. I've written stories of that sort myself. (Just recenty I wrote of a possibly fabricated confession that caused the wrongful imprisonment of a man, Freddie Peacock, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.) But we should not forget the good — and often stressful and dangerous — work that police do every day.

Crime victims deserve not to be forgotten, and John York's unwavering desire to give Cali Doe an identity is a powerful reminder of the good that law enforcement officials can do.

PODCAST EVENT

On Tuesday, May 17, there will be an event at the new Democrat and Chronicle office space, 245 E. Main St., called "Roc This Podcast." Veronica Volk and Gary Craig will be joined by other local podcasters and will talk about their individual projects and the medium itself.

Also on the panel will be Carlet Cleare and Michelle Faust, hosts of Over Dinner with Michelle and Carlet, a podcast about "the many journeys we take on the road to love," and Karl J.P. Smith and Madeline Sofia, hosts of Benchwarmers about the "misadventures and victories of life in the sciences, as told by current and former graduate students."

To get more information, go to democratandchronicle.com and type "Roc This Podcast" into the search field.

Also, on Sunday evenings, Volk and Craig host a Twitter chat at 7 p.m. about the day's episode. That can be found at the hashtag #tammyjo. Volk and Craig will be there to chat May 15. On May 22 the chat will be joined by Deborah Halber, the author of The Skeleton Crew, which has direct connections to the story of Cali Doe.